Pico Iyer

Novelist and Essayist

Pico Iyer - son of philosopher Raghavan Iyer - won academic scholarships to Eton, Oxford University and Harvard - graduating with a Congratulatory Double First at Oxford, and the highest marks in the university - and taught writing and literature at Harvard before joining Time in 1982 as a writer on world affairs.

Iyer is best know for his travel writing, publishing books such as Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, & the Search for Home (2000) and Video Night in Kathmandu, and contributing to publications such as the New York Times and National Geographic. He has also released novels, including Cuba and the Night (1995). His 2008 book The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama was an intimate portrait of the Dalai Lama.